


Steele Under My Skin

by Qwilleran



Category: Remington Steele (TV)
Genre: Divorce, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Reconciliation, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:01:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qwilleran/pseuds/Qwilleran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura hasn't seen her husband in several years. Now their son is getting married and their paths are bound to cross again. She's not sure how she will handle the reappearance of the mystery man who is, after all, still under her skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steele Under My Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joylee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joylee/gifts).



Steele Under My Skin

Technically this is their 26th wedding anniversary.

Of course, today will be the first time she’s seen him in nearly eight years, so it’s more of a stressful occasion than a happy one. 

Laura takes a sip of white wine and wishes she were the sort of person who could successfully stress-drink. Or smoke! Maybe if she were a smoker, she’d have something to calm her nerves and do with her hands. Of course, she would just end up fighting with all the people passive-aggressively pointing out the no smoking signs all over the place, and then she’d be angry by the time he showed up. The fact that in reality she _is_ one of those people who passive-aggressively point out no smoking signs doesn’t help her inner turmoil at all.

For once, she hopes and prays that he’s late. Because if he’s late and has to slip in after the whole thing has already started, then it will be easier. Maybe. It’s not going to be easy to see him again no matter what, but if they can look at each other for awhile from opposite sides of a church (or better yet, from opposite sides of a table if he only manages to make it in time for the rehearsal dinner) then she’ll have a better chance of knowing what she’s up against.

She’ll have a better chance of knowing what the sight of him is going to do to her after all these years. 

She knows more or less what he looks like now because she’s sneaked a quick look (not close!) at the picture of him in the contacts on her daughter’s phone. She knows he’s gone gray and still has a disarming grin. Part of her hopes that the gray hair doesn’t flatter him, and that his wrinkles have wrinkles and that he just looks old and tired. 

A hand touches her shoulder and she spins around, more nervously and more clumsily than she would like. 

And… no. He doesn’t look old and tired. The gray hair looks distinguished and the wrinkles in his face look more like character lines. And his smile is still as charming and his eyes are still as blue and his suit is still perfectly tailored. In short, he looks wonderful. 

Damn him.

“Mr. Steele,” she says coolly. Thank goodness she at least has her voice under control.

He gives her a cheeky grin. “Mrs. Steele.”

Involuntarily her lips purse up, a fact which doesn’t go unnoticed by someone so very good at reading body language, especially hers. “Laura,” he corrects himself, his voice softer. “It’s good to see you again. You look—”

Before he can say how she looks (old? good? wonderful? tired?) he’s interrupted by Nora as she throws herself into her father’s arms. He hugs her and gives her a kiss on the top of her head. “Nora, my angel,” he says. “What’s the latest on the freshman dorm crisis?”

Father and daughter launch into a conversation that’s so detailed it gives Laura a momentary feeling of completely irrational jealousy. This was the same conversation she had with her daughter four days ago, so how could she be sharing it with someone else now? And the answer, of course, is ridiculously easy. To this day there are things she mistrusts about him - though over the years she’s come to understand that this says more about her than it does about him - but the one thing she can never, ever fault him on is being a devoted father.

His life isn’t always settled (there’s more than a bit of the vagabond about him still) and he isn’t always on the same continent as his children, but he’s always been there for them nonetheless. He’s been in regular contact, and he’s spent time with them. He’s even been to their graduations. And don’t think it was easy to avoid running into him then, even in the huge crowds. 

 

They sit in front rows on opposite sides of the church and Laura suddenly has something else to be anxious enough. Will they be expected to sit together at the actual wedding? And then she scolds herself for worrying about it. What would be the harm in that? It’s not like they have to worry about making conversation with each other, and it certainly shouldn’t bring up uncomfortable memories of their own wedding. The deck of that fishing boat is miles and miles away from the comfortable atmosphere of this pretty little church.

There’s not all that many things for the mother of the groom to do, but she concentrates hard on every aspect of the rehearsal, just in case. 

The point when the minister is going over the vows is when it gets suddenly embarrassing. Laura doesn’t care much for names like Ashley Dyanne, but at least the bride can probably expect to hear her full name pronounced at the wedding without a single person snickering or saying, “Seriously?”

Daniel Humphrey Michael Holt Steele, on the other hand, warrants a cough from one of the groomsmen and a couple of surprised looks from bridesmaids, and his mother writhes in embarrassment for him. 

And for his parents, who perpetrated such a dirty trick on a helpless infant 23 years ago. 

 

They hadn’t really been thinking that hard about the future when their first child was born. Laura had been drunk on the giddy feeling of being young and free and in love and having her first baby and not being worried about the future for one of the few times in her whole life.

 _He_ had been more serious about it, for once. He’d been adamant that, having grown up with no name of his own, his son would have plenty of names to choose from. And every single one of them would be legally, legitimately his own. 

So, they called him after Daniel Chalmers, Humphrey Bogart and one of his most important characters, his mother, and the identity his father had stepped into. For a while they’d tried to shorten Humphrey to Harry and call him after his father, but it hadn’t worked on any level. Too much baggage, too many memories. 

His parents still forget and call him Buddy (souvenir of a night spent with a colicky infant and some obscure black and white failure of 1930s Hollywood). These days he calls himself Dan Steele, and says truthfully that he was named for his paternal grandfather.

(Nearly five years later, they’d fought over what seemed like every name ever bestowed on a starlet by a movie studio hotshot. And then _The Thin Man_ came on, and he’d said, “Myrna!” and Laura, with her own very personal reasons, had countered with, “No. Not Myrna. Nora!” and the rest was history.)

 

The rest of the rehearsal goes smoothly and, surprisingly, so does the dinner afterwards. They sit with Nora between them and barely have to look at one another. The evening mercifully comes to a close without the exchange of more than two dozen words.

They do look at one another at the wedding, though. It can’t be helped.

The groom is their son. He may be a grown man now, but he’s still their little boy, part of each of them, and Laura just can’t not look at the person responsible for the other half. And every time she glances over at him, she finds him looking right back at her.

At the reception he asks her for a dance and, against her better judgment, she walks out on the dance floor with him. 

It’s murder to find that after all these years he still knows just how to hold her, and her body still fits against his just right. It’s even worse to find that she still reacts just the way she always did.

They wander off together afterwards, to a slightly more private area of the hall, hidden behind a column and several tall plants. Their conversation is only small talk, and particularly useless small talk at that. 

Eventually, they stop talking entirely. He raises one eyebrow in silent invitation and they share another dance, holding each other closer this time. The music stops but the dance doesn’t. 

The kiss, when it comes, is as inevitable as it always was.

Someone in the hall does an incompetent job of opening up a bottle of champagne. The _pop!_ is like a gunshot and the cork comes flying out in their general direction. They both hit the floor without thinking about it, automatic reactions born of years of experience. 

There’s a moment of embarrassed silence as they sit up, but then their eyes meet and they both start to laugh. They sit there, disheveled, legs stretched out in front of them on the floor, and give themselves up the hilarity. 

“Ah, Laura,” he says, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand, “I never could kiss you without someone shooting at us. At least this time it’s only the cork from a champagne bottle instead of a bullet, thank heavens.”

She smiles in reminiscence. “We don’t even have to run for our lives this time,” she says.

“Then let’s not. Run, I mean.” 

And then he’s moving closer and giving her that smoldering, irresistible look of his and Laura finds that her legs have turned to jelly and she couldn’t possibly run if she wanted to. And she does want to, desperately. Well, she does and she doesn’t.

Just like the old days, in other words.

She passively allows herself to be gathered into his embrace, but there’s nothing passive about the way she returns his kiss. Almost without effort she can feel thirty years melt away in an instant, feel all the baggage between them seem to disappear.

There’s a quiet, polite cough from just over their heads. They look up to find the grinning, freckled face of their daughter looking down at them, blue eyes dancing in merriment. “Auntie Mildred’s been wondering where you two had gotten off to. Should I go back and make your excuses while you sneak out the back door?”

“Nora,” he says severely, “if you have any ideas of re-enacting _The Parent Trap,_ I beg you to at least go for Hayley Mills and not Lindsay Lohan. For many reasons, not just the salacious offscreen antics.”

But he gets to his feet and helps Laura to hers, and they don’t look at each other as they follow Nora back to the party. 

Laura is extremely pointed in the way she avoids him from then on. If she looks at him and finds him looking at her, she quickly looks someplace else and pretends not to have seen him. 

She breathes a sigh of relief when the reception is over and she manages to get out of the building without their paths crossing at all. But of course it’s premature. She hears the approach of hurried footsteps just as she’s unlocking her car and turns automatically, pepper spray at the ready.

He stops a few feet away and holds up his hands. “Surely I haven’t done anything to deserve that, Laura. In the last few years, at least,” he hastens to add.

“No. Not in the last few years.” She turns back to her car door and tries to ignore the hand he lays on her arm.

“Laura,” he says, turning her to face him. “Laura, surely we have something to say to each other after all these years. I admit this is probably neither the time nor the place, so come and have dinner with me tomorrow night. For old times’ sake. Please?” he says, just as she’s about to refuse.

“I’ll think about it,” she allows. 

 

She has no intention of keeping the appointment. Absolutely none. Having dinner with him is the worst thing she could possibly do. She from long years of experience just what road that’s going to lead her down. So she won’t go. She’ll send him a text message at the last minute saying something has suddenly come up, or… or…

Well, she’ll be damned if she dresses up for it, anyway.

In the end, she’s about five minutes early and overdressed. She doesn’t even have to allow herself extra time to find his apartment, because it’s in a neighborhood she knows well. He lives just a few streets away from the building where her loft used to be. It’s undergone some urban redevelopment, but it’s still recognizable after all this time. 

He opens the door in shirtsleeves and casual, albeit immaculately tailored, pants. He has a towel draped over his shoulder and a wooden spoon in his hand. He looks slightly distracted.

“I thought we were going out,” she says.

He gives her a quick kiss on the cheek and turns his back on her, heading back to the kitchen that’s separated from the living room by a low counter and a dining table. “Ah, we were, but then I called Roselli’s and cancelled the reservation. You don’t mind my cooking, do you?”

“No. As I recall, you used to be rather good at it. Probably better than Roselli’s.”

He accepts the compliment with a smile and a jaunty wave of the spoon before he goes back to concentrating on his sauce.

The situation makes her nervous, though. A restaurant would be neutral ground. His apartment is anything but. She’ll just have to be on her guard, that’s all.

She looks around his place. It’s not fancy; a far cry from the nice place he used to have, the one paid for on her agency’s dime. There’s an awful lot of _him_ in here, though. She lived with him long enough to recognize all the little touches evident even in the neat, minimalist space. 

The only thing out of place from a design standpoint is the television. It’s larger than fashion would dictate, and sits on a stand in the corner of the room exactly at optimal viewing distance from the couch instead of being mounted over the fireplace. Just right for watching old movies.

“I assume you’re planning something along the lines of dinner and a movie?” she asks.

“Something along those lines, yes. Auld lang syne and all that. I’ll even let you pick the movie, if you don’t trust me.”

Laura’s stung by his words, and the way they hit precisely at the center of her paranoia. She’s just been dreading the thought of some old romantic movie that will bring up soft memories for both of them. That’s the last thing she wants.

“John Wayne,” she says promptly. A western or a war movie should be safe enough. 

“As you wish.”

 

Dinner is pleasant. Laura can feel herself relaxing, feel the tension draining away from her. They sit across the table from one another and it’s just like two old friends whose paths haven’t crossed in a few years. They talk about Nora, about Buddy and his new wife, about their work. And of course there are plenty of “do-you-remember” type stories. Most of those stay safely in the far distant past. They talk about cases, not about their marriage. 

Afterwards they settle down on the couch, a comfortable, friendly distance from one another, and get ready to watch the John Wayne movie that he brings in from an enormous built-in storage closet in the hall. 

At first she can’t remember offhand what _McLintock!_ is about, but the first scenes seem to be full of cattle and cowboys. Twenty minutes later the Duke is arguing with his estranged wife and Laura is feeling betrayed. 

It’s the line about, “Half the people in the world are women. Why do you have to stir me?” that gets to her.

Laura knows that feeling all too well. Half the people in the world are men, and she’s known her share. But no man she’s ever met has stirred her blood the way this one does. 

_Does,_ she thinks dully. Oh, dear lord, the present tense. There’s a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. Even when she’s consciously protecting herself, even at her most guarded, her mind still slips up and admits that the spark is still there just as much as it ever was. 

She shrinks back into herself and barely glances at him for the duration of the movie. And every moment of the film is a torment to her. A bickering couple who’ve been separated but never officially divorced. Crackling sexual tension. A mostly-grown daughter who wants her parents back together. It all hits far too close to home for comfort, and she could cheerfully kill him for picking it.

Every once in awhile she glances over at him and pretends she’s not checking to see if he’s looking at her. Most of the time he seems to be completely absorbed in the plot, but occasionally their eyes meet in the flickering light from the screen. Just for a split second, but it’s enough. 

When the credits roll, Laura gets up and picks up her purse and thanks him cordially, if a little coldly, for a nice dinner. He escorts her to the door with equal civility and they prepare to take their leave of one another. 

She actually has the door open ready to leave when he says, “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the movie, Laura.” 

Laura gives him a murderous look and slams the door. “Didn’t enjoy it?” she says angrily. “Didn’t _enjoy_ a deliberate, blatant attempt at manipulation? I was expecting you to try something, _Casablanca_ or some black and white romantic comedy, but I gave you credit for more subtlety than that one. Of all the conniving ---”

“You’re the one who suggested John Wayne,” he points out.

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t have if I’d known he did a movie about a big jerk who’s trying to win his wife back after she’s had the good sense to leave him in the first place.”

“At least he had the good sense to dunk her in the horse trough,” he shoots right back. “Maybe if we’d had one of those around we’d still be together. I don’t know. Maybe I should have tried giving you a good smack on the bottom once or twice.”

The joke, if he means it as such, falls flat.

Laura gasps in shock and raises one hand to slap him. He blocks her wrist and looks at her coldly.

“Laura, I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” he says. His voice is calm and icy and dangerous, and she recognizes the other part of him. The part of him that actually made Remington Steele a force to be reckoned with.

She stares at him and it’s like it’s 1983 all over again. The sheer animal magnetism that attracted her to him in the first place. That all but irresistible pull. She can’t take her eyes off him, and she’s aware of the burning heat of his hand as he’s still holding her wrist. 

Slowly she becomes aware of something else, as well. Those uncanny blue eyes of his are locked onto hers, and his breathing is less than steady. He’s not as cold and in control as she thought.

For a long moment they just stare at one another, breathing hard.

He pulls her against him, firmly, but without the least hint of roughness. It’s Laura who kisses him, though, not the other way around.

Her body responds to his just as strongly as it ever did when she was younger, and the passion leaves her so breathless she’s afraid her legs will just disappear and leave her to sink to the floor with no support at all. But it wouldn’t matter, not the way he’s holding her against him.

“I’m not sleeping with you,” she warns him, when they finally break apart.

“That would be the wisest thing,” he agrees, and brings his mouth down on hers again.

Gradually, moving so slowly that they hardly seem to be moving at all, they make their way to the hall off the kitchen, the one that leads to the bedroom. Laura realizes dimly where they’ve gotten to and acknowledges that yes, she’s going to sleep with him. In the deepest recesses of her brain, a warning bell goes off, but she silences it. She doesn’t care.

“This is not a reconciliation,” she says as they hit the bed.

“Of course not,” he tells her, hand on zipper of her dress.

“This is never going to happen again.”

“Oh, absolutely. Never again. Very wise,” he says breathlessly.

After that neither of them says anything intelligible for quite awhile.

 

In the morning, she feels terribly, terribly conspicuous as she makes her way home in the overly dressy dress. It’s like being twenty years old again. The walk of shame. At the same time, she’s aware of a certain defiance within her. Why should she be ashamed, after all? She's a normal, healthy woman and he is still technically her husband. 

She tells herself that this will never, ever happen again, and knows damn well she’s lying through her teeth.

Laura hums to herself as she peels off the dress and steps into the warm shower.


End file.
